Conventional olive pitting machines employ cam-driven pairs of opposed, coaxial pitting knives and coring knives to remove the pits from olives. In such machines, each olive is held during the pitting operation in a position so that the olives's longitudinal axis coincides with the axis of the opposed knives.
To slice pitted olives using conventional machines, the pitted olives must be transferred from a pitting machine to a separate slicing machine. In the process of transferring the pitted olives, the orientations of the pitted olives are randomized. Thus, the pitted olives are either sliced with random orientation or must be reoriented prior to slicing.
In conventional olive slicing machines, each pitted olive slice is severed from the remaining portion of the olive by a sawing operation in which two or more closely spaced parallel blades saw through the olive. This sawing operation does not result in a clean slice, and instead destroys a portion of the olive between and adjacent the parallel blades.
It has not been known until the present invention how to both pit and slice olives in a single machine, with each olive held in the same orientation during both the pitting and slicing operation. Nor has it been known until the present invention how to perform the slicing portion of such combined pitting and slicing process in a manner resulting in clean olive slices with negligible loss.